These forces
of decline have whittled away at inner-city school attendance,
funding and, ultimately, student achievement. Achievement
gaps between rich and poor, black and white, and cities and suburbs
persist, and in some cases have even widened (Orfield 2001). Public
school student enrollment among fourth-graders was 58 percent white
nationwide in 2003. In a representative sample of large central
cities, however, 70 percent were black and Hispanic.2
Similarly, the number of fourth-grade students eligible for free or
reduced-price lunch was dramatically higher in cities: 69 percent, as
opposed to 44 percent nationally (Lutkus et al. 2003). Linked to
these demographic phenomena are relatively low scores on achievement
tests in central cities.

These
conditions are of great concern to many in our cities, including
students, parents, and community residents, neighborhood
institutions, and the schools themselves. In fact, good schools are
an important component of healthy, economically strong communities.
They increase the attractiveness of neighborhoods to new families who
seek advancement for their children, and offer chances for upward
mobility among existing residents (Center for Community Change 2005).
Economists have found schools to be part of the bundle of amenities
that families consider in their housing decisions. As such, exemplary
schools play a large role in increasing real estate prices. For
example, Black (1999) and several others3
show that higher scores on standardized tests are correlated with
higher real estate prices in the surrounding neighborhood as new
families move in to take advantage of good schools. Healthy housing
markets generally encourage new retail development to serve new
residents and generally mean additional local jobs. Such economic
development means higher local tax revenues and more funds for
schools, as increased property tax revenues that finance public
education.

However,
instead of viewing one another as natural allies or as mutual victims
of disenfranchisement with similar stakes in the vitality of the
neighborhood, communities and schools have sometimes developed
antagonist relationships. School staff and administrators often view
parents and communities as deficient in providing proper learning
environments for students. From their perspective, “the
community” is part of the problem. Educators usually want
parents, community organizations, churches, and other local actors to
stay out of the way and let teaching professionals do what they know
best—educate children (Gold, Simon, and Brown 2002; Mediratta
and Fruchter 2001).

Community
members, on the other hand, blame schools for their children’s
consistently inferior academic performance. Past negative experiences
with teachers and school administration keep parents at arm’s
length. Families may also feel too intimidated to make demands of
more educated and well-versed school professionals, viewing an
educator’s credentials as more important than their own
knowledge of what is right for their children. Immigrants and
non-English speakers often lack the means and confidence to
communicate their values in ways that school staff will understand
and respect. As a result, families with children in school, and the
larger community as a whole, remain silent in the face of increasing
bureaucratic control and low achievement (Brewster and Railsback
2003a, 2003b).

A
long-used model of building community power through alliances and
collective action—community organizing—has been refocused
to make schools more responsive to community needs and to transform
them into allies rather than adversaries. In this new branch of
organizing—called “education organizing”—community-based
organizations (CBOs) advocate for bottom-up decision-making and
school accountability to parents and communities based on developing
power and trust within urban neighborhoods (Gold et al. 2004).4
The challenges that these groups face are daunting. While the
communities are losing jobs and housing, schools face high turnover
among teachers and students, inadequate facilities, and students ill
prepared for academic work. Despite these obstacles, this nascent
movement has already yielded a broad range of results: from increased
school safety, to new facilities and resources, to greater social
capital and relational trust within communities and schools (Bryk and
Schneider 2003; Shirley 1997, 2002; Warren 2001).

In
what follows, we explore the ways that education organizing brings
communities and schools together for the dual purposes of rebuilding
communities and improving education. We present an overview of the
growing experience of education organizing, tracking the results of
efforts through analysis of school performance and evaluation data.
We also rely on interviews with educators and organizers to assess
the impact of community involvement in schools on both building
community and improving education.

We
first discuss the historic roots of community and education
organizing and theories of change describing the steps used to gain
community and school improvements. Next, we outline the various
problems facing urban communities and their schools that make
improvements, especially those measured through standardized testing,
so difficult. We then develop indicators to assess how well
organizing groups have done despite the obstacles they encounter,
exploring available data on test scores and other standards of school
and community improvement. We illustrate our argument with a detailed
look at some local affiliates of the Industrial Areas Foundation
(IAF), a preeminent network of community organizers. Finally, we draw
conclusions about the usefulness of education organizing in improving
both communities and schools. We find that while these groups are not
completely reshaping the face of American public education, they seem
to be affecting some change.

Community
organizing took shape in the 1960s with the emergence of antipoverty
programs and the evolution of the civil rights movement. Some
organizers recruited disenfranchised voters in the South; others
brought together poor people in cities, mostly to confront issues
such as poor housing and lack of decent jobs. The 1960s-vintage
community organizations were comprehensive, combining political
organizing, housing, economic development, and other elements of
community building. For a time, especially in the 1980s, organizing
declined in popularity in comparison to “bricks and sticks”
organizations that attracted funding and political support, such as
community development corporations (CDCs). In the last decade,
however, community development has come full circle, with
comprehensive organizations reemerging as central to this movement,
including a simultaneous resurgence of community organizing (Stoecker
1997a, 1997b; Bratt 1997; Keating 1997). National groups such as the
Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), the Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), and the Pacific Institute for
Community Organizations (PICO) continue to work with poor people
across the nation to improve conditions through grassroots
organizing.5
Many independent, local organizers are also at work on campaigns for
living wages, affordable housing, and fighting predatory lending
practices within low-income communities (Merrifield 2002; Squires
2003).

Much
research has been devoted to understanding community organizing and
developing theories of change, which detail how organizing
leads to more-empowered communities. These theories outline the
cyclical process of “how groups believe their actions will,
over time, create broad lasting societal change” (Mediratta
2004, 17). In what follows, we adopt and expand upon one such theory
developed by Gold and others (2004). We first apply it to community
organizing in general, then more specifically to education
organizing. We articulate both theories in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Community Organizing and Education Organizing
Models

Figure
1 shows the ways that community-based organizations help
catalyze civic engagement within under-represented communities. These
groups pull people together to identify issues of concern to
the community at large, such as reducing crime, creating jobs, making
housing more affordable and available, and increasing access to
quality healthcare and education. Getting people to talk together and
build relationships over community-wide issues help develop trust and
establish shared values. This process develops what Putnam (2000)
labels social capital.6
By strengthening ties within neighborhoods, CBO organizers help
foster bonding social capital—a network of friendships
and trust among neighbors and co-parishioners—a kind of social
glue that holds people together. As the neighborhood finds its voice,
organizers help members reach out to form alliances with other
groups—to people across town who may be interested in the same
or different issues—thus creating bridging social capital.

Once
groups identify and agree upon the issues of greatest importance to
them, they work toward indigenous leadership development to
increase the community’s ability to address problems on their
own and get their voices heard. As these organizations define their
issues and develop leaders, they build political power. Poor
people can often take on the forces of city hall or the statehouse
and win political victories. Writing about IAF, Cortes (1994) says
“when
people learn through politics to work with each other, supporting one
another's projects, a trust emerges that goes beyond the barriers of
race, ethnicity, income, and geography: wehave
found that we can rebuild community by reconstructing democracy.”

Community
groups demand public accountability from public officials in
addressing community needs. Accountability comes in the form of
“commitments made in public that obligate a wide range of
stakeholders…to follow through on their promises…”
(Gold, Simon, and Brown 2002, 17). One common method of pressuring
officials to address local needs is through public accountability
sessions, where they listen to community concerns and are asked to
sign agreements before a large assembly of their constituents.
Altogether, this iterative process leads to greater community
capacity—the ability to solve problems collectively to help
the community identify needs and secure the resources needed to
address them (Glickman and Servon 1998; Chaskin
et al. 2001).

Education
organizing emerged as a distinct subset of community organizing in
the late 1980s, as organizing groups increasingly identified
inadequate schools as a key issue facing their neighborhoods. Today,
there are about 200 groups focusing on issues such as school safety,
overcrowded classrooms, deteriorating buildings with few modern
amenities, poor student performance, and low teacher expectations and
quality compared to schools in wealthier neighborhoods (Mediratta and
Fruchter 2001). Many education-organizing groups are affiliated with
the national networks mentioned above, such as Oakland Community
Organizations (OCO), a PICO affiliate, and Austin Interfaith, part of
Texas IAF. In addition, many others have arisen independently, such
as Mothers On the Move in the Bronx, the Logan Square Neighborhood
Association in Chicago, and the Alliance Organizing Project in
Philadelphia (Mediratta and Karp 2001; Gold, Simon, and Brown 2002;
Mediratta and Fruchter 2003).

While
individual organizations and their strategies may differ, they have
enough similarities to posit a theory of change that
describes, in general, how they hope to achieve their goals through
education organizing (Figure 1). Mobilizing around issues unique to
education entails some of the same elements as community organizing
that we discussed earlier: building social capital, developing
leadership and local power, and demanding public accountability. In
addition, it introduces the idea of building school-community
connections: bringing parents, schools, churches, elected
officials and others together to act upon common education concerns.
Through this technique, parents and schools simultaneously become
resources for one another, sharing decision-making, and taking joint
ownership of the success of the school and its students.

While
organizing brings schools and communities together, it affects them
in different ways. As shown in Figure 1, education organizing can
bring about greater community capacity to identify problems
and resolve them, increase community participation in school
functions and programs, and bring better service integration
between schools and other public facilities. Goals for schools
include:

Many
obstacles complicate this model of school and community change.
Residential segregation, poverty, social class and cultural
differences, health problems, household mobility, and other problems
muddy the process. These factors make it difficult to isolate the
impact of organizing from other factors affecting schools (Mediratta
2004; Rothstein 2004). They also call into question the adequacy of
test scores as a primary measurement of learning and progress among
inner-city children (Rothstein 2004; Wright 2002). We discuss these
constraints here before turning our attention in Section 4 to what
education organizing groups have actually achieved in spite of such
barriers.

Research
shows that standardized tests do not accurately measure the
achievements of poor, minority children for a variety of reasons. Social
class, race,
and differences in child
rearing play
substantial roles in achievement, more so for reading than in math.
Middle-class parents are more likely to read to their children and
engage them in conversation than working class and poor parents. As a
result, middle-class, white children come to school better prepared
in basic skills than poorer, oftentimes minority, students. This is
indicated by test score gaps between whites and blacks, as documented
in Figures 2 and 3.

For instance, white students score at the 50th
percentile for math, while blacks score only in the 23rd
percentile in standardized tests (Rothstein 2002). Without basic
skills, minority students have great difficulty moving forward later
and are less likely to gain proficiency (Rothstein 2004).

Health
differences
also affect learning. Children who cannot afford eyeglasses will be
hard-pressed to read classroom blackboards or their books. Similarly,
lack of medical and dental care cause poor children to miss school.
Lead poisoning and asthma, endemic to many inner-city neighborhoods,
also play important roles in learning problems and result in lower
test scores. Finally, poor nutrition and lower birth weights among
poor children can stunt their learning potential (Rothstein 2004).

High
levels of householdmobility
(often due to lack of affordable housing, job instability,
unemployment, and homelessness) disproportionately affect the
attendance records and scores of poor children. A General Accounting
Office (1994) report found that one-sixth of all third graders had
already attended at least three different schools. The study revealed
greater mobility for children who are low-income, inner-city
residents, and/or have limited English proficiency. High mobility
rates correlate with lower achievement status, grade promotion rates,
and higher drop out rates for those children. A more recent study
confirmed that low-income, minority students are hardest hit by
switching schools, and change schools most frequently. If blacks were
mobile at the same lower rate as white students, 14 percent of the
black-white achievement gap would disappear; similarly, reduced
mobility would close the gap by 8 percent between Hispanics and
whites (Hanushek, Kain, and Rivkin 2004).

The
net result of these compounded problems is that low-income, minority,
and urban students continue to perform poorly on standardized tests.
Using the 2002 National Assessment of Education Performance (NAEP),
Figures 2 and 3 illustrate the achievement gaps between whites and
blacks, whites and Hispanics, and non-poor and poor students. On
average, minority and poor students scored at least 20 points less on
math. In many large central cities, such as Atlanta, Washington,
D.C., Houston, and Los Angeles, the gap was even greater (Figure 2).
Reading scores were even worse, with many cities showing
approximately 30-point gaps for minority students—nearly 60
points in Atlanta and Washington D.C. for blacks (Figure 3).

Recently,
“high-stakes testing”—in which schools, teachers,
and students who do poorly on standardized tests are penalized—has
gained significant attention, largely because of the No Child
Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Due to increased testing, coupled with the
persistent achievement gaps discussed above, many poor, minority
schools receive both stigmatizing labels, such as “low-performing,”
and sanctions for failing to improve (Orfield 2001). However, the
reality of multiple external factors described above shed doubt on
the utility of standardized tests as performance measures for
individual students or schools as a whole.

Many
observers are skeptical that these tests measure actual knowledge,
pointing instead to differences in test-taking ability. Critics fault
pressures to “teach to the test” with taking valuable
classroom time away from more meaningful instruction. As a result,
McNeil (2000) and others claim that tests reduce the quality of
education in all schools. Experts also question whether the type of
skills measured through standardized tests are indeed those students
need to master in order to achieve success in life. In Texas,
teachers must decide whether to have bilingual students take the
Spanish or English version of the statewide test, knowing that
students will score higher on Spanish, but need to learn English as a
more important life strategy (Laughlin 2005). Tests also change so
frequently that it is also difficult to identify whether improvements
in scores reflect a change in learning or changes in the structure
and questions of the test (McNeil 2000, 2001; Orfield and Kornhaber
2001; Rothstein 2004; Firestone, Schorr, and Monfils 2004). Heubert
(2001, 180) concludes that “tests do not produce improved
teaching and learning any more than a thermometer reduces fever.”

Despite
numerous obstacles, organizers have been relentless in their efforts
to change schools and communities for the better. Through case
studies, interviews, surveys, school data analysis, and program
evaluations, researchers have found organizing groups winning gains
in many arenas. In Figures 4 and 5, we expand the community outcomes
(community capacity, community participation, and service
integration) and school outcomes (student achievement, school
climate, curriculum and instruction, governance and accountability,
and equity) listed in Figure 1 to include measurement indicators and
examples. Our research findings on these outcomes are quite similar
to those of a survey by Mediratta and Fruchter (2001) of 66
education-organizing groups. They found that groups do not pursue all
goals and outcomes with equal attention. The most popular goal was
improving school climate (45), followed closely by governance
and accountability (38), curriculum and instruction (33),
and equity (32). Far fewer groups targeted service
integration (8) and community participation (6), while
none pursued student achievement as a separate strategy,
viewing it most likely as the foundation of every strategy. (The
survey did not break out community capacity separately).

In this section, we discuss the findings of a broad
array of studies, supplemented by our analysis of primary data, participant
observation, and interviews. We provide examples of both success and failures,
and try to explore the above survey results, using the indicators presented in
Figures 4 and 5.

Figure 4: Community Outcomes,
Indicators, and Examples

Community
Outcomes

Indicators

Examples

Greater
capacity

Groups work on other issues
facing communities

Members take leadership in
other areas

MOM safety and crime

AOP
parents became organizers, school board (??)

Community
participation

Increased presence in schools

More adult learning
opportunities

Increased
volunteers for after school/special events

LSNA Parent-Teacher Mentor
Program

LSNA Community Learning
Centers

AOP
After-School programs

Service
integration

Co-location with other
community institutions

Better
coordination of activities with other community service providers

Note that we do not mean this to be an exhaustive
review of education organizing achievements and weaknesses. Instead, we want
this to serve as initial evidence of the diverse impacts, be they small or
large, that educating organizing is having on communities and schools.

Educational
organizing enhances community capacity by increasing “the
ability of communities to meet multiple needs” (Mediratta and
Fruchter 2001, 44). Newly developed social capital, leadership,
power, and public accountability can be mobilized to tackle other
issues facing communities. For instance, while organizing schools,
members of Mothers on the Move (MOM) had to confronted concerns
around neighborhood safety and violence. They eventually expanded
their activities to address those pressing problems and got more
community residents involved in their campaigns as a result
(Mediratta and Karp 2003). Parent leaders trained by the Logan Square
Neighborhood Association (LSNA) worked on neighborhood safety,
property taxes, zoning, immigration, health insurance, and other
issues (Blanc et al. 2002). Students organized through New York ACORN
schools have joined campaigns against predatory lending and
environmental racism, and have successfully mobilized to secure local
jobs because of classroom teaching on career ladders and job
interviews. (Simon, Pickron-Davis, and Brown 2002). Things that could
slow or jeopardize these gains include an over-reliance on
professional organizers to do the work without transferring
leadership skills to community residents (Fisher 1994). In addition,
the movement can lose momentum through the attrition of both parents
and students, as children graduate (Mediratta and Karp 2003).

Education
organizing strives to increase community participation in
schools by increasing parental presence in schools, offering more
adult learning opportunities, and getting more volunteers for
after-school programs and special events. For example, LSNA created
the Parent-Teacher Mentor Program, pairing parents with teachers in
the classroom to assist with learning and discipline.7
In Philadelphia, parents involved in the Alliance Organizing Project
(AOP) participated in new after-school programs and Parent Leadership
Teams (Gold, Pickron-Davis, and Brown 2002). This type of
participation can be threatened by tokenism, however, where parents
are given menial tasks to keep them busy, rather than important and
rewarding roles to fill (Shirley 1997, 2002).

Many
organizing groups are working towards greater service integration
within their communities. They encourage the co-location of other
vital community services within school buildings and better
coordination of school activities and needs with other community
service providers. For example, LSNA established Community Learning
Centers within six schools in their community, opening the schools up
after hours to offer homework assistance, adult education including
GED and ESL classes, cultural programs and health services (Blanc et
al. 2002). While many communities need these types of programs, it
appears that few groups are pursuing them, or perhaps there is a
greater rate of failure in winning such services in schools.

The
top priority of most organizing groups is to improve student
achievement. There are many ways of measuring changes in
achievement, including absolute gains in test scores, the relative
narrowing of gaps between different races and income groups, moving
more students into advanced classes, and superior graduation and
college entrance rates. For instance, three New Small Autonomous
Schools established as a result of mobilization by Oakland Community
Organizations (OCO) showed improvements on statewide standardized
tests in just three years compared to schools with similar
demographic and socio-economic characteristics and to the school
district as a whole (See Figures 6 and 7). The results were better
for the elementary schools than in the middle schools (Little and
Wing 2003).

Figure 6: Elementary School Students Scoring At or Above
"Proficient" on California Standards Test in Mathematics,
2002-2003

Source: Little and Wing 2003

Figure 7: Middle School Students Scoring At or Above
“Proficient” on California Standards Test in Mathematics,
2002-2003

Source:
Little and Wing 2003

While considered the most
important school outcome, raising student achievement remains
the most difficult standard to achieve, partly because “achievement”
can be defined in so many ways. Not only must organizations overcome
the multiple problems facing inner-city neighborhoods, but also
students in their schools have to score well on standardized tests
that are stacked against them. Some schools have performed well,
narrowing the gaps between themselves and those in affluent
neighborhoods; however, teachers and organizers must continue to work
to bring inner-city schools to higher levels.

Improving
the quality of the school climate is another important goal
for education organizing efforts. Districts can address overcrowding
by building new facilities, reducing class and school sizes, and
lowering teacher-student ratios. Schools can create safer learning
environments by eliminating environmental hazards and repairing
school buildings, implementing fair disciplinary practices for
students, and increasing crime and traffic controls around schools.
Organizing groups have opened community-controlled public schools in
Chicago, Jersey City, New York City, Oakland, and St. Paul, among
other cities (Blanc et al. 2002; Beam and Irani 2003; Gold, Simon,
and Brown 2002b; Little and Wing 2003). The Parent and Youth
Education Policy Collaborative in Chicago has successfully lobbied
for increased police patrols around schools, peer review of school
disciplinary actions, and money to remove lead paint and install new
roofs and windows (Keheler and Morita 2004). Between 1997 and 2004,
another group of CBOs in Chicago attracted $132 million in funds to
build and improve five schools (http://www.ncbg.org).

It is generally easiest for
people concerned about schools to organize about improving school
climate. As a highly visible issue, most parents and teachers can
readily agree on the pressing needs of physically crumbling,
overcrowded, and understaffed facilities. This often provides a
convenient starting point for school change without having to
immediately challenge the culture of the schools—a much more
difficult task (Mediratta and Fruchter 2001; Laughlin 2005). Instead
of demanding structural, system-wide changes, school climate can
usually be addressed by targeting funds to specific schools with
identified problems. The key to sustained education organizing,
however, is viewing such improvements as a first step. Bringing a
community’s newfound power to bear on more winnable issues,
such as getting a new playground, can be a step toward increased
public accountability in more complicated arenas, such as increasing
the number of higher-level courses and the number of minority
students in them.

Education
organizing groups pay increasing attention to curriculum and
instruction, trying to transform curricula, improve teachers’
qualifications and their expectations for students, and offer better
professional development opportunities to school staff. Organized
schools in both Oakland and New York have incorporated social justice
into the curriculum, helping students identify, research, and take
direct action on issues important to their communities (Gold, Simon,
and Brown 2002b; Simon, Pickron-Davis and Brown 2002). Other groups
have supported the adoption of popular curricula focused on improving
math skills and literacy, such as Links to Literacy and Family Math
(Blanc et al. 2002; Simon, Pickron-Davis and Brown 2002). To improve
teacher quality and address shortages, the Northwest Neighborhood
Federation in Chicago helped found El Centro Teacher Training Center
so immigrants with teaching certification from their native countries
can become certified to teach in the U.S. (Keleher and Morita 2004).
LSNA conducted a joint professional development session for more than
80 parents and teachers on ways of exercising respect toward and
positive authority over children in the classroom (Blanc et al.
2002).

Groups run up against tougher
barriers when they focus their accountability efforts on challenging
curriculum and instruction methods. Mediratta and Fruchter
(2001, 35) summarize the hesitation many groups feel in confronting
issues involving instruction:

Focusing on instruction means
groups must translate complex teaching and learning interactions into
tangible issues that will energize members and generate clear demands
that can be won through direct action campaigns. Because
instructional issues…[are] so difficult to define…many
groups continue to focus on environment and climate issues as they
struggle with how to improve schooling outcomes.

Curriculum
discussions often pit parents against the personal and professional
interests of entrenched educators and administrators, raising the
political stakes considerably. It takes time to give low-income
parents, often poorly educated themselves, the confidence to
understand and challenge standard education models and practices
(Gold, Simon, and Brown 2002). However, evidence shows that parents
can gain both confidence and knowledge as they participate as
teachers in after-school programs and religious classes, and as
academic jargon is translated into their everyday language (Laughlin
2005). While fewer groups have made concerted efforts to address
these more technical issues to date, it seems that this number is on
the rise.

Organizing
groups also fight for improvements in school governance and
accountability by gaining more community representation in
school decision-making, cultivating the sympathies of school staff
and administrators, and educating the educators about their students
through home visitations. For example, in New York City, MOM was
successful in forcing a district superintendent into retirement,
helping pick his replacement, and getting MOM representatives elected
to the district school board (Mediratta and Karp 2003). Thanks to
OCO, the Oakland Unified School District policy requires design teams
of both teachers and parents to create ideas for new small schools
(Gold, Simon, and Brown 2002b; Little and Wing 2003).

Improving
school governance and accountability is a difficult task, and
organizing attempts have yielded mixed results. In some instances,
new principals and teachers have embraced communities as equal
partners in education. In other cases, however, new staff are not
quite so cooperative, as MOM found out when the new superintendent
took office (Mediratta and Karp 2003). Mediratta and Fruchter (2001)
found that many groups were frustrated by the subsequent reversals of
what seemed to be victories in this area. In many cases, initial
commitments were overruled by higher-level administrators or weakened
by the departure of sympathetic district personnel (Mediratta and
Fruchter 2001; Shirley 2002). Also, campaigns to place organizing
members into official school leadership positions can backfire when
members face the tension of maintaining pressure on the establishment
from the inside (Mediratta and Karp 2003; Mediratta and Fruchter
2001).

Finally,
most groups work for greater equity, by winning more funds for
resource-starved schools, promoting incentives to attract and
retaining qualified teachers, and fighting for higher-level course
offerings, among other things. OCO helped push through a $300 bond
issue to fund the New Autonomous Small Schools Initiative. It also
ended the practice of multi-tracking in seven of eight schools, where
teachers and students operated on multiple school calendars and
rotated classrooms due to overcrowded conditions. They also
campaigned helped win salary increases for teachers (Gold, Simon, and
Brown 2002b). The Washington Interfaith Network (WIN) fought for and
won a $15 million trust from the Washington, D.C. city council to
support after-school programs (Mediratta and Fruchter 2001). Other
groups have identified the problem of low number of advanced courses
offered, along with the low number of minority and poor students in
them; they have agitated to see this situation change. In just two
years of education organizing, La Familia in Chicago saw more Latinos
moving on to higher-level math and science courses in the local high
school (Jasis and Ordonez-Jasis 2004).

Equity is perhaps the
most controversial goal for groups to pursue because it levels
specific claims of injustice against school structures and
administrators. Education organizing has produced more resources and
fairer treatment for low-income and minority students. It is still
easier to win funds to address visible infrastructure issues, such as
needed repairs and new school buildings (which may indeed be matters
of equitable distribution of resources), as opposed to changing
attitudes and funneling resources toward low-income students without
knowing if the outcome will measurably raise student achievement.

IAF is
a good example of a national organizing group that has taken on
education issues. Founded in the 1940s by Saul Alinsky, IAF organizes
a broad base of citizens across race and ethnicity on a wide range of
issues (Alinsky 1946, 1971).8
Today, the Foundation’s network includes more than 50 local
groups representing more than 1,000 institutions and one million
families, principally in New York, Texas, California, Arizona, New
Mexico, Nebraska, and Maryland.9
These IAF affiliates have removed blighted properties and built
thousands of units of “Nehemiah” housing built in New
York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington DC.10
Further, they have had successful living wage campaigns in Baltimore
and New York; pushed human capital efforts to connect less educated
people to good jobs; and, importantly for this paper, developed a
large number of Alliance Schools in the Southwest (mostly in Texas)
and community-based schools in New York.

IAF’s
base is local institutions—primarily faith congregations, but
also parents’ associations, schools, and trade unions—which
it sees as rooted in communities and committed to advocating for
societal change over the long term.11
The organization bases its philosophy on traditional mainstream
American values—on religious faith and the self-interest of
people—making campaigns for social change more sustainable. IAF
works with poor and often less-educated people, channeling their
anger about inequality into an agenda for political action. It
maintains an “Iron Rule:” never do for people what they
can do for themselves—a kind of tough love. This encourages
self-reliance among its community leaders. To reach their objectives,
members go through multi-day training programs to learn how to think
through local issues, to relate to each other and to public
officials, and to recruit neighbors to local causes—creating
what IAF calls a “university of the streets.” IAF’s
organizing process differs from many of the other groups discussed
earlier: leadership development and constituent development come
early in the process, with issue identification (such as the need for
better schools) coming later, flowing out of dialogue within the
organization.

IAF
has built a network of more than 150 Alliance Schools in Texas and
elsewhere in the Southwest. These campuses operate on the philosophy
that public schools have a critical role in improving communities.
Local IAF groups began organizing to transform a culture of low
expectations for students and little or no community participation.
Now, they argue, the campuses have increased achievement and formed
strategic alliances. Groups focus on strategically engaging
parents in the process of running schools,rather than having
them involved in a token manner (Shirley 2002). This means
building leadership among parents and using the social capital that
grows out of that to improve school performance through civic
engagement. The Alliance Schools expect teachers to reach out to
parents in their neighborhoods. Teachers learn the basics of the IAF
philosophy and train in elements of organizing (e.g., how to carry
out one-on-one house meetings with parents).

At
about the same time that Texas IAF began the Alliance Schools, IAF
affiliates in the northeast initiated organizing at set of small high
schools in New York City. The city’s Board of Education allowed
only community groups to work with high schools, so IAF-East formed
the Bronx Leadership Academy in 1992. Other small schools were
organized later. The philosophy underlying the New York strategies
differed from that in the Southwest. IAF believed that it is very
hard to reach the parents of high school students in the ways that
parents of elementary and middle school parents were organized in
Texas. The older children are, the less likely that their parents are
to be involved in the details of their education. Therefore, while
IAF-East still emphasized the organization of neighborhoods and
churches, it puts more emphasis on hiring excellent principals to
inspire change from within the schools. Therefore, the organizing
model differed a bit between the two regions. IAF-East (as in Texas)
has had to fight hard to dislodge incompetent principals, teachers,
and school board officials who stand in the way of better education.
Partnerships are not free of conflict, not only for IAF groups but
also for others around the country.

Since
IAF affiliates in these two regions have been working in schools for
well over a decade, there has been enough time for their actions to
begin to show tangible results. Our initial assessment of the
indicators of both community and school outcomes show some positive
results, although students and schools have not reached the highest
level of attainment that IAF desires. As Shirley (2002, 38) finds,
the advances made thus far have often come with political friction,
remain hard to measure in terms of student achievement, and leave
“considerable room for improvement.” We now take a closer
look at where and why both Texas and New York City IAF groups have
been successful, and what problems continue.

IAF
groups have a legacy of improving communities by empowering them to
act and developing leaders. Texas IAF has done this through its
thirteen affiliates throughout the state. The organization has
increased community capacity by building bonding socialcapital
within low-income, minority communities, creating a statewide network
linking otherwise isolated, fragmented neighborhoods and mobilizing
them around issues of joint concern. Shirley (2002) discusses this
process in a barrio of McAllen, Texas. There, a priest established a
comunidades de base—a weekly meeting at St. Joseph’s
the Worker Catholic Church to encourage his parishioners to talk
about local problems and explore scriptural responses. The increased
social capital that resulted helped with the development of an
Alliance School. Both bonding and bridgingsocial capitalwere evident in events such as a February 2005 weekend conference
in Austin, where more than 300 teachers, principals, parents, and
CBOs represented the needs of more than 100 schools throughout the
state. They discussed key issues facing their schools, problems in
their classrooms, accountability, and testing. Notably, the Austin
School district superintendent participated in the workshops and
engaged the participants. On the final day of the conference, close
to 1,000 individuals converged on the State Capitol to lobby
legislators on issues important to the Alliance Schools.

The
degree of community participation remains quite high even at
the local level, with about 200 members from Austin Interfaith,
including parents and students, attending a March 2005 Austin
Independent School District board meeting. Parents have moved into
formal leadership roles within schools, as after school program
directors, community liaisons, and the like. Seeing their parents
take on such roles has also inspired students to get more involved in
school and church leadership (Simon, Gold, and Brown 2002).

IAF
has been successful in achieving service integration through
education organizing in Austin and elsewhere. Austin Interfaith built
the new J. J. Pickle School after a decade of agitation that the
school meet a variety of community needs in addition to education.
The resulting structure contains a public library, police substation,
and community gymnasium.12
In another instance of service integration, members of Austin
Interfaith realized that poor student access to healthcare, magnified
by the temporary closing of a local clinic, was having severe impacts
on student learning. They lobbied and won a new health clinic inside
the Zavala Elementary School (Simon, Gold, and Brown 2002).

Although,
as we have discussed, standardized test scores are imperfect
indicators of learning, both Texas and New York administer tests
statewide: the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) and
New York State Regents Exams, respectively.13
Keeping in mind the limitations of such tests, we have analyzed some
of the available data on these tests to assess how education
organizing has affected student achievement. Of the twenty
original Alliance Schools that began working in partnership with
Texas IAF in 1992, five were still actively involved in the fall of
2004.14
Among these five schools, the gap in passing rates on the statewide achievement
test between the schools and the state average narrowed considerably between
1994 and 2002 (see Figure 8). The same is true for fifty veteran Alliance
Schools, or those schools that have been involved in the network for at least
five years (see Figure 9).

Source: Texas Education Agency, School Profiles, Various
Schools and Years.

In just five years, from 1997 to 2002, the number of veteran Alliance Schools
rated as “exemplary” or “recognized” by the Texas Education Agency increased
from just over ten to almost thirty (Interfaith Education Fund 2003). These
numbers indicate that Alliance Schools are improving more quickly than the state
as a whole in terms of student performance on standardized tests, a significant
achievement considering the low-income status of the students in Alliance
Schools compared to the state average. However, many Alliance Schools continue
to perform below the state average. Furthermore, achievement gaps persisted
across the state between whites and minorities, and between wealthier versus
“economically disadvantaged” students (King 2004).

According
to IAF-East organizers in New York, their high schools are in high
demand because of their solid reputations among parents and because
of their efforts. The Bronx Leadership Academy, the oldest and most
successful of the IAF-organized schools, graduated 89 percent of its
seniors in 2003 and received 2500 applications for only 125 slots for
new students (Interview with Ray Domanico, November 27, 2004).
Insideschools.org, an independent organization that rates New York
City schools, describes BLA as,

A small, orderly alternative to
the large and chaotic neighborhood high schools in the Bronx…[that]
has built a reputation as an academically challenging
college-preparatory school for both general and special education
students. It is a leader in the small-schools movement, and several
other new schools, including Bronx Leadership Academy II, have been
created on the BLA model…. The school attracts high achieving
public school students as well as parochial school students who like
the structured setting and the fact BLA has a uniform policy.15

In
2004, BLA had the fifth best graduation rate in the Bronx, behind
only the nationally known magnet school—the Bronx High School
of Science—and three other small schools. Another IAF school,
the East Bronx Congregations High School for Public Service, is the
seventh best high school in the city for graduating incoming
low-achieving eighth graders on time; it received 800 applications
for 100 open slots in 2003. (Interview with Ray Domanico 2004).

Figures
10 and 11 compare the results of eight schools set up by organizing
groups with the citywide averages for math and English on the New
York State Regents exams.

Figure 10: Percent of Students Passing Regents
Mathematics Exam after Four Years, Organized Schools, Similar
Schools, and City, 2002-2003

Source: New York
City Department of Education, Annual School Report Cards 2002-2003

Figure 11: Percent of Students Passing Regents Reading
Exam after Four Years, Organized Schools, Similar Schools, and City,
2002-2003

Source: New York City Department of Education, Annual
School Report Cards 2002-2003

Three of the schools are affiliated with IAF (Bronx Leadership Academy, EBC-Public Service, and EBC-Pubic
Safety and Law), two with ACORN (School for Social Justice and
Community High School) and three with other groups. Although this
section is primarily about IAF schools, we add the other schools in
order to provide a richer picture of student achievement in organized
schools. On the math Regents exam (Figure 10), IAF’s Bronx
Leadership Academy scored more than 20 percentage points higher than
both the citywide average and a similar set of schools. More than 90
percent of its students passed the math Regents exam after four
years. Two other community schools also performed better than the
city average. The results vis-à-vis schools of similar
demographics show that the community-organized schools score better
than their counterparts do in four of seven math comparisons (the
eighth was a tie). In the English exam (Figure 11), the community
schools were considerably more successful than the comparison
institutions, ahead in six of the eight cases. This shows organized
schools beginning to distinguish themselves from schools with similar
demographics, but not yet at an overwhelming rate.

IAF
groups have also worked to improve school climate. As
mentioned above, IAF-East was instrumental in starting at least three
new public high schools in New York City controlled by the community.
These are all small schools, aimed at providing more focused
attention to relatively few students. The demand for admission to
these schools has dwarfed available capacity. Austin
Interfaith in Texas won political battles to get new and remodeled
playgrounds for schools throughout the district. They also
collaborated with school staff to plan for safer school arrivals and
dismissals, leading to a decrease in the number of traffic-related
accidents before and after school. Increased parent visibility within
schools, through observation and volunteering, has reduced discipline
problems, as well (Simon, Gold, and Brown 2002). In New York’s
Bushwick neighborhood, IAF took the lead in cleaning up a serious
drug problem at their high school there, demanding a greater police
presence (Powis 2005).

Both Texas
and New York City IAF affiliates have positive records of
accomplishment on improving curriculum and instruction within
their schools. Both emphasize the importance of having quality
principals that develop a school culture of valuing community in
which teachers (especially young ones) are mentored and nurtured.
Principals
also must juggle the politically difficult tasks of simultaneously
working with the neighborhood and the school district
administrators—who often have different values and styles. One outstanding example is the first Alliance School principal
of Zavala Elementary School in Austin, who mentored at least five
future Alliance School principals (Simon, Gold, and Brown 2002;
Shirley 1997). In New York, they point to the BLA principal who has
been responsible for hiring and mentoring a slate of good teachers.

Austin
Interfaith helped raise teacher expectations for student learning,
leading to adoption of curricula that are more challenging and
emphasize new teaching practices.16
This included the creation of the Young Scientists Program at Zavala
Elementary, now replicated at three other schools, leading to an
increased number of students accepted into the science magnet program
at a prestigious middle school. They also won a new emphasis on
quality bilingual education. Austin Interfaith has increased
professional development opportunities for teachers and principals
through in-service day training and special conferences (Simon, Gold,
and Brown 2002).

In Texas, the
presence of organized Alliance Schools and their constituents have
strengthened school governance and accountability to the
community. Parents are hired as official liaisons between schools and
communities. Principals, teachers, and parents also regularly join
forces to win more resources from the district and the state.
Alliance Schools have proven to be a strong force in dealing with
officials at all level of government (Simon, Gold, and Brown 2002;
Shirley 1997, 2002 ETC).

Teachers have
been better connected to the communities their students call home.
Austin Interfaith conducts “neighborhood walks” and
teacher visits to students’ homes to increase teacher
sensitivity to other issues facing their students, as well as to
increase parent
involvement. According to a former principal, during the first year
of operation of the J. J. Pickle School, teachers made approximately
125 house and neighborhood visits. That means that teachers were in
that poor, largely immigrant, community about two of every three
school days during that year building relationships with parents.
(Interview with Claudia Santamaria, February 5, 2005.)

IAF
groups want their students to receive equitable resources and
opportunities compared to wealthier schools within their districts
and states. This is reflected in efforts to win more funds for
low-income schools, bilingual education resources for high English
learner populations, after school programs to enhance learning, and
initiatives to hire teachers that are more qualified and offer
courses that are more challenging. We discussed many of these
earlier. In addition, Texas IAF convinced the state to commit funding
to schools willing to work on student achievement in partnership with
communities. A 2002 report showed that the Investment Capital Fund—a
competitive statewide grant—stood at $20 million, a ten-fold
increase since the original 1993 commitment (Simon, Gold, and Brown
2002), with approximately $2.5 million awarded to Alliance Schools
annually (Laughlin 2005).

After-school
programs have also been popular means of balancing the playing field
and giving poor, highly mobile students a chance to catch up to their
wealthier, more stable counterparts. Austin Interfaith helped develop
the Collaborative After-School Program with the school district to
provide free extracurricular opportunities to schools with low-income
populations. Overall, 29 schools, and almost 7,500 students were
served within just one year of operation. Student participants had a
3 percent higher rate of school attendance than non-participants had,
and reported high levels of satisfaction with the program.17
Dallas Area Interfaith has won $3.5 million in annual after school
program funding, and The Metropolitan Organization out of Houston has
won $2.9 million to serve more than 12,000 students daily in 100
schools.18

Education organizing has
helped both schools and their surrounding communities. Local groups
have increased social capital and boosted parents’ interest and
participation in schooling. In doing so, they have also raised
parents’ ability and willingness to challenge the insular
nature of school systems and question top-down school reform,
breaking down what one organizer called the “fallacy of the
expert.” When these community-based efforts are successful,
schools are more effective and student achievement improves.

Every organizing context is
different politically, socially, economically, and institutionally.
However, inner-city schools and communities all face similar issues.
Several common elements of success emerge from the
education-organizing movement. First, parents and school staff view
themselves increasingly as allies rather than adversaries. A second
key ingredient is leadership on the part of principals, who can
motivate teachers and engage parents in the common enterprise of
helping kids learn. Often, community organizations help identify good
principals and bring neighborhoods and schools together. In doing so,
they raise the level of expectations for learning. Third, organizing
has forced school systems to repair facilities, provide for safer
schools, and create new, small schools. In many cases, the results
have been improved scores on standardized tests in schools that have
historically lagged behind schools in more affluent parts of their
districts. We have documented clear cases of the narrowing
differentials between rich and poor schools, when the latter are
organized. In the end, we have shown that organizing matters.

These successes have come in
the face of substantial obstacles. The complex nature of the problems
facing inner-city communities and schools certainly hamper the
effectiveness of targeted campaigns to improve urban public
education. However, it is also important to remember that the number
of communities in which education organizing occurs remains small in
proportion to the needs within inner cities. Similarly, the number of
schools actually involved in organizing nationally is probably less
than one percent of all schools. More victories are possible, but a
long-term effort of organizers remains necessary.

The emphasis on student
achievement as a benchmark of school reform success remains a problem
for organizers. While many education-organizing groups are motivated
by the need to improve student achievement, the diverse actions they
use to address this “problem” make correlations between
their actions and test results hard to establish. As we have
indicated, some groups focus on system-wide inequalities in resource
distribution—inadequate facilities, poor teacher quality, and
lack of textbooks—as the root of poor test performance. Others
take a more school-level approach, targeting low teacher expectations
by getting individual teachers involved in the community and
introducing higher-level courses into the curriculum. A few also try
to address what they believe to be “bad” curriculum and
instruction methods by researching and suggesting alternative means
of teaching and course content. Groups may utilize a combination of
such strategies based on different community needs and their level of
organizational sophistication. While this diversity is good in that
it allows groups to develop strategies in context of their
communities, it also hinders researchers’ ability to isolate
the impacts of organizing on outcomes. It also raises the question of
whether or not organizing should be deemed “failures”
when test scores or other measures of achievement do not change
significantly, when other elements of school-community life have
shown improvement.

Some organizing drives have
not achieved long-term success. While it is good to understand what
is working, little has been done to document education-organizing
campaigns that have fallen short or succeeded only marginally, and
analyze the circumstances surrounding such disappointments. Some
schools started with community group support have closed, as in the
case of several ACORN schools, while others have simply fallen away
from the organizing movement, as evidenced by the constant flux in
the number of official Alliance Schools (Beam and Irani 2003;
Interview with Carrie Laughlin, March 28, 2005). This may be due to
school staff turnover, redistricting, lack of people and funds for
sustained organizing, or other reasons (Shirley 2002; Interview with
Carrie Laughlin, March 28, 2005). However, little research has
tracked such attrition to determine its root causes and how education
organizers might overcome them.

The time needed for
successful organizing grows more precious as standardized testing
takes up more classroom time and administrative energy. The
availability of school staff is limited for
participating in developing relational cultures among teachers,
parents, and children through house visits, neighborhood walks, study
groups, parent academies, and other efforts. Lack of such time slows
the process of making inroads within the educational establishment
and seeing real changes because it takes many years for
the elements of good schooling to gel.
(Interview with Claudia Santamaria and Sr. Mignonne Konecny, February
5, 2005).

In the end, the evidence that
we have amassed shows real progress—evidence that these groups
have made considerable headway in the face of difficult conditions.
Schooling will improve as education organizing continues to better
connect communities and schools. More clearly needs to be done in
this new field, but a solid foundation has been set for improving
communities, boosting student achievement, and transforming
inner-city public schools.

Katz, Bruce. 2004. Neighborhoods
of Choice and Connection: The Evolution of American Neighborhood
Policy and What It Means for the United Kingdom. Washington D. C.:
Brooking Institution Research Brief, Metropolitan Policy Program.

Keleher,
Terry, and Josina Morita. 2004. Building Community Power for
Better Schools: An Evaluation of the Parent and Youth Education
Policy Collaborative 2001-2003. Chicago, IL: Applied Research
Center.

King, Michael. Parsing the TAKS
at AISD. The Austin Chronicle, June 4, 2004.

________and
Angela Valenzuela. 2001. The Harmful Impact of the TAAS System of
Testing in Texas: Beneath the Accountability Rhetoric, in Orfield and
Kornhaber, pp. 127-150.

Mediratta, Kavitha, and Norm
Fruchter. 2001. Mapping the Field of Organizing for School
Improvement: A report on education organizing in Baltimore,
Chicago, Los Angeles, the Mississippi Delta, New York City,
Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. New York:
Institute for Education and Social Policy, New York
University.

Mediratta, Kavitha, and Jessica
Karp. 2003. Parent Power and Urban School Reform: The Story of
Mothers on the Move. New York: Institute for Education and Social
Policy, New York University.

Simon,
Elaine, Marcine Pickron-Davis, and Chris Brown. 2002. Case Study:
New York Acorn—Indicators Project on Education Organizing.
Philadelphia, PA: Research for Action with Cross City Campaign
for Urban School Reform.

1
Poverty is distributed unevenly across metropolitan areas: the
poverty rate in central cities (18.4 percent) was more than twice
the rate in the suburbs (8.3 percent) in 2000. Jargowsky (2003) and
Kingsley and Pettit (2003) show that the extent of concentrated
poverty declined during the 1990s. However, it remains high and the
consequences in terms of poor health, crime, and bad social services
remain for residents continue to be substantial.

2
“Large central cities” included in the sample for the
referenced study are Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland,
District of Columbia, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, and San
Diego.

3
Among these studies are Clark and Herrin (2000), Figlio and Lucas
(2000), Bogart and Cromwell (2000), and Hayes and Taylor (1996).
Baum (2004) links inner-city school quality to the debate over smart
growth.

4
In our discussion, we refer to “community-based organizations”
as those whose primary constituency is neighborhood residents and
local institutions to which they belong (e.g. civic clubs and faith
institutions). There is much debate as to whether groups initiated
by outside forces (government, universities, unions, businesses,
etc.) are truly “community-based,” representing the
interests of residents.

5
On organizing related to the national groups discussed in this
paper, see Alinsky 1946, 1971; Gecan
2002; http://acorn.org;
http://www.piconetwork.org;
Slessarev 2000, Osterman 2002. For research on
organizing more generally, see Gittell and Vidal 1998; Kahn 1991;
Parachini and Covington n.d;
Piven and Cloward 1977; Mondros and Wilson 1994; Tropman, Erlich,
and Rothman 1995.

6 In
his seminal work on this subject, Putman (2000; 19) defines social
capital as “the connections among individuals—social
networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise
from them.” This connectedness is similar to the sorts of
bonds among neighbors that Jane Jacobs (1961) found in her Greenwich
Village neighborhood in the 1950s. Jacobs used the term in
her book as did Coleman (1988) in connection to education’s
social context.

7
As of 2002, more than 840 parents had been through the program
(Blanc et al. 2002).

8
There are many writings on IAF, including two books on schools by
Shirley (1997, 2002). Other writings on IAF include Chambers (2004),
Gecan (2001) Osterman (2001), Warren (2001), Cortes (1994), and
Rogers (1990).

11
Three other national organizing groups—the Pacific Institute
for Community Organization (PICO), Direct Action for Research and
Training (DART), and the Gamiliel Foundation follow the IAF model.
In contrast, ACORN’s membership base is individuals, arguing
that few very low-income individuals are connected to any
institutions. ACORN organizes door-to-door and claims to be active
in 60 cities (Strom n.d.).

12
In 2004, J.J. Pickle Elementary School was selected by the KnowledgeWorks Foundation to join its “Schools as Centers of
Community Honor Society.” In making the award to Pickle, the
foundation noted, “Austin Interfaith, a non-partisan,
multi-issue organization, is perhaps Pickle’s most high-impact
collaborator in identifying and developing community leaders that
hold the school and school district accountable for students’
academic achievement.” For more information, see
http://www.nationalschoolsearch.org/honors/school.asp?intSchoolID=5.

13
The TAKS replaced the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) as
the statewide test beginning in the 2002-2003 school year. Most of
the data we report is from the earlier TAAS test.

14
Some of these schools are no longer in operation or connected to the
group that organized them. We discuss potential reasons for this in
Section 6, “Conclusion.”

MetroMath, a Center for Learning and
Teaching funded by the National Science Foundation, supported this
research under Grant # ESI0333753. A consortium of Rutgers
University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the City University
of New York, MetroMath aims to improve the learning of mathematics of
inner-city children. More information about MetroMath is available at
http://www.metromath/org.
We thank several members of the MetroMath group, including Roberta
Schorr, Joseph Rosenstein, and Yakov Epstein for their support. Eva
Gold and Gregory Camilli provided insights and help with data. We
also thank organizers, parents, teachers, and principals associated
with the Industrial Areas Foundation and their Alliance Schools
program in Texas. We are especially grateful to Claudia Santamaria,
Sr. Mignonne Konecny, and Carrie Laughlin of IAF-Southwest and
Michael Gecan and Ray Domanico of IAF-Northeast for discussions and
provision of information. Michael Gecan provided helpful comments on
an earlier draft. We are responsible for any errors of interpretation
of fact that remain.